The sport can look dull if it is missing a rivalry. Rivalries can be against opponents but the rivalry amongst teammates can spice up the game. Such a rivalry took birth in 2010 season.
This year, the Red Bull racing team was dominant throughout the first half of the season. There were no issues at all at the start of the season or in the mid-season. As the championship contenders started to make their position clear and moved away from
other drivers who didn’t have a strong car, there were tensions in the Red Bull garage between Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber.
Vettel had a strong season but he seemed to be too eager to become the champion. He took some dangerous steps in the race to overtake his opponents which caused a crash and he was totally out of the race where he could have easily finished second or third
place.
Webber claimed that he was considered as the number two driver in the Red Bull garage and the team is totally behind the young German Vettel rather than supporting both the drivers equally.
Webber has vowed that there will be no infighting in the team for the 2011 season. Webber said that things like this are a part of competition and when drivers are fighting for the championship, things like this can happen.
Commenting on relationship with Vettel, Webber said, “Our relationship is good now, at the end of the year it was good to have a chat about things now and push a few things away that happened, it is hard to talk closely to each other during the season in
the heat of the battle and over the winter we will have more time to build for the season and do a better job without any friction.”
This was not the first time that this happened in the recent years. Three years ago, it was Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso from McLaren who had a go at each other. Due to their clash, they were denied a title.
At the end of the season 2007, it was none of them who could end up winning the title. It was the Finn driver Kimi Raikkonen from Ferrari who took advantage of this rivalry and grasped the title by just a single point.
Heading to the last race, Raikkonen was 17 points behind the leader Lewis Hamilton in 2007. The gap was a big one and Raikkonen knew that the best he could do was to finish at the top and leave the rest to his luck. The Finn driver did not lose focus at
all and he achieved what might have looked impossible to many critics.
He took the title by a single point as Lewis Hamilton crashed his car and was unable to end up in points. This win was dramatic for Kimi Raikkonen but he had silently kept his focus on racing rather than some other issues like Hamilton and Alonso had. This
is probably why Raikkonen is known as the “Iceman.”
The next year is expected to be as exciting as 2010. Not only Red Bull but there are other teams who can face the same infighting as Red Bull did. Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes have the strongest driver’s line-ups and the drivers will look to give a tough
time to their opponents.
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